AEAweb: Journal Article Full-Text Access

Note to Institutional Subscribers: If you normally access AEAweb journal content via your university or firm's subscription and receive this page, please click here. The most likely causes of this are a recently changed IP address, a new subscription, or the renewal of a lapsed institutional subscription. This page will stop appearing on the next synchronisation of the document delivery and authentication systems.

You may also click here for pay-per-view, Athens login and other access options .

AEA Members, please click the button below to access the login form:

Adamopoulos, Tasso, and
Diego Restuccia. 2014. "The Size Distribution of Farms and International Productivity Differences."
American Economic Review,
104(6): 1667-97.

Show Article Details

DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.6.1667

Abstract:We study the determinants of differences in farm-size across countries and their impact on agricultural and aggregate productivity using a quantitative sectoral model featuring a distribution of farms. Measured aggregate factors (capital, land, economy-wide productivity) account for ¼ of the observed differences in farm size and productivity. Policies and institutions that misallocate resources across farms have the potential to account for the remaining differences. Exploiting within-country variation in crop-specific price distortions and their correlation with farm size, we construct a cross-country measure of farm-size distortions which together with aggregate factors accounts for ½ of the cross-country differences in size and productivity.

FiveThirtyEight covered the ongoing debate over teacher evaluation, citing two companion papers that appeared together in the September 2014 issue of the American Economic Review. In "Measuring the Impacts of Teachers" I and II the authors construct "value-added" estimates for teachers in a large urban school district by observing how students' test scores change from year to year as they pass through each teacher's classroom. They find that their teacher value-added scores are not significantly biased and are potent predictors of students' later-life outcomes.

Wonkblog covered an article published this month in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. In Saving Lives at Birth: The Impact of Home Births on Infant Outcomes the authors study a sample of over 300,000 Dutch women and find that home birth increases the risk of newborn mortality, especially for low-income women, likely because of reduced access to medical technologies after delivery.

A Wall Street Journalanalysis of potential merger activity in the health insurance industry cited a study published in the American Economic Review. In "Paying a Premium on Your Premium? Consolidation in the US Health Insurance Industry," the authors found that a 1999 merger between two large U.S. health insurers drove up customer premiums and depressed doctors' earnings in certain parts of the country.